Astrology in the crossfire: the stormy debate after the comet of 1577

ABSTRACT

The new star of 1572 and the comet of 1577 had a major impact on the ways in which astronomical research developed in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Behind this gradual but significant change there was an extended epistemological reform which placed increasing emphasis on reason and experience and strove to exclude arguments from Scripture and authority from scientific debate. This paper argues that the humanist debate on astrology after 1577, which was initiated by highly prestigious members of a supraconfessional Republic of Letters, can be seen as an element of this process. Unlike earlier detractors of astrology, these new critics chiefly employed philosophical and scientific arguments concerning the legitimation of the entire art. By analysing a variety of accounts, this paper will reveal how great and complex the stakes in the debate over astrology were. They concerned not only the crucial problem of predestination and God’s interventionalism (hence also the possibility of miracles), but also the idea of science, the concept of the human mind, and ultimately the humanist ideal of the virtuous, rational, and responsible citizen.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 There were more than 110 publications on the comet of 1577 alone (see note 9). On both events, see Clarissa Doris Hellman, The Comet of 1577: Its Place in the History of Astronomy (New York: Columbia Universiy Press, 1941); Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923–1958), 6 (1956), pp. 67–98; Robert S. Westman, ‘The Comet and the Cosmos: Kepler, Mästlin, and the Copernican System’, Studia Copernicana, 15 (1972), pp. 7–30; Peter Barker and Bernard R. Goldstein, ‘The Role of Comets in the Copernican Revolution’, Studies in History and Philosophy, 19 (1988), pp. 299–319; Charlotte Methuen, ‘This Comet or New Star – Theology and the Interpretation of the Nova of 1572’, Perspectives on Science, 5 (1997), pp. 499–514; Sara Schechner, Comets, Popular Culture, and the Birth of Modern Cosmology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Tabitta van Nouhuys, The Age of Two-Faced Janus: The Comets of 1577 and 1618 and the Decline of the Aristotelian World View in the Netherlands (Leiden: Brill, 1998); Steven Vanden Broecke, The Limits of Influence: Pico, Louvain, and the Crisis of Renaissance Astrology (Leiden: Brill, 2003); Michael Weichenhan, ‘Ergo perit coelum … ’: die Supernova des Jahres 1572 und die Überwindung der aristotelischen Kosmologie (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2004); Miguel A. Granada, ‘Michael Maestlin and the new star of 1572’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 38 (2007), 99–124; Robert S. Westman, The Copernican Question. Prognostication, Skepticism, and Celestial Order (Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 2011), pp. 223–58; Celestial Novelties on the Eve of the Scientific Revolution, 1540–1630, ed. by Dario Tessicini and Patrick Boner (Florence: Olschki, 2013); Gábor Almási, ‘Tycho Brahe and the Separation of Astronomy from Astrology: the Making of a New Scientific Discourse’, Science in Context, 26/1 (2013), pp. 3–30; Adam Mosley, ‘The History and Historiography of Early Modern Comets’, in Christoph Rothmann’s Discourse on the Comet of 1585: An Edition and Translation with Accompanying Essays, ed. by Miguel A. Granada, Adam Mosley and Nicholas Jardine (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2014), pp. 282–325; Steven Vanden Broecke, ‘Astrological Contingency: Between Ontology and Epistemology (1300–1600)’, in Contingency and Natural Order in Early Modern Science, ed. by Pietro Daniel Omodeo and Rodolfo Garau (Cham: Springer, 2019), pp. 137–55; Anna Jerratsch, Der frühneuzeitliche Kometendiskurs im Spiegel deutschsprachiger Flugschriften (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2020).

2 This is still missing from Kuhn’s The Copernican Revolution (1957) and present but not dominant in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). A better starting point for this literature is provided by David Wootton in The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution (New York: Harper, 2015), which goes against recent criticism of the idea of the Scientific Revolution. For a review, see Stephen Pumfrey in Renaissance Quarterly, 70 (2017), pp. 283–84.

3 On Tycho and Maestlin see Robert S. Westman, ‘Three Responses to the Copernican Theory: Johannes Praetorius, Tycho Brahe, and Michael Maestlin’, The Copernican Achievement, ed idem (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975), pp. 285–345; John Robert Christianson, ‘Tycho Brahe’s German Treatise on the Comet of 1577: a Study in Science and Politics’, Isis, 70 (1979), pp. 110–40; Owen Gingerich and James Voelkel, ‘Tycho Brahe’s Copernican Campaign’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 29 (1998), pp. 1–34 (see especially pp. 8–9 on Oswald Schreckenfuchs’ hypotheses); Steven Vanden Broecke, ‘Teratology and the Publication of Tycho Brahe’s New World System (1588)’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 37 (2006), pp. 1–17; Miguel A. Granada, ‘Did Tycho Eliminate the Celestial Spheres before 1586?’, ibid., pp. 125–145; idem, ‘Michael Maestlin and the New Star of 1572’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 38 (2007), pp. 99–124. On Wittich see Owen Gingerich and Robert Westman, ‘The Wittich Connection: Conflict and Priority in Late 16th Century Cosmology’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 78 (1988), pp. 1–148. On the general interest in new hypotheses, see the article by Gingerich and Voelkel (as quoted above); the letter by Andreas Dudith to Tadeáš Hájek of 29 January 1581, in which Dudith claims that Wittich is dedicated to the restitution of the motion of the planets in order to make more secure astrological prognostications: Andreas Dudithius, Epistulae, 7 vols, ed. by Lech Szczucki, Tibor Szepessy et al. (Budapest: Akadémia and Argumentum, 1992–2019), 7, pp. 34–36; and the preface to Helisaeus Roeslin, Tractatus meteorastrologiphysicus. Das ist Auß richtigem lauff der Cometen  … (Strasbourg: Jobin, 1597), ff. ii^r–iv^v. Also note Rudolf II’s interest in the Copernican model of Jost Bürgi, the clockmaker of William IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, who was first invited to build and present his model in Prague in 1592. C. Alhard von Drach, ‘Jost Burgi, Kammeruhrmacher Kaisers Rudolf II’, Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerh. Kaiserhauses, 15 (1893), pp. 15–44. Cf. Nicolaus Reimarus Ursus, De astronomicis hypothesibus (Prague: apud autorem, 1597), f. Giii^r; and Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, ‘Astronomy, Technology, Humanism and Art at the Entry of Rudolf II into Vienna, 1577’, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, 85–86 (1989–1990), pp. 99–121.

4 Among the many revisionist works, see Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-century England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); idem, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Barker and Goldstein, ‘The Role of Comets’; Vanden Broecke, The Limits of Influence; Westman, The Copernican Question; Mosley, ‘The History and Historiography’.

5 Westman, The Copernican Question, pp. 225–26. While on the whole Westman may be right, it is also true that this kind of debate about Copernican and Ptolemaic ‘cosmologies’ started gaining ground in scholarly circles precisely at this time (cf. with note 3). See also Vanden Broecke, The Limits of Influence.

6 Cf. Vanden Broecke, The Limits of Influence; Claudia Brosseder, ‘The Writing in the Wittenberg Sky: Astrology in Sixteenth-Century Germany’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 66 (2005), pp. 557–576; Robin B. Barnes, Astrology and Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 157–214; Jerratsch, Der frühneuzeitliche Kometendiskurs.

7 Cf. with Barnes, Astrology and Reformation, 14: ‘While among both Catholics and Calvinists clerical opposition tended more and more to restrict the art to elites, German Lutheran culture proved positively hospitable to the perpetuation and intensifcation of a popularised stellar science’ (see also p. 213). For the concept of ‘neo-Piconian’, see Westman, The Copernican Question, pp. 226–29.

8 See Mosley, ‘The History and Historiography’.

9 C. Doris Hellman, ‘A Bibliography of Tracts and Treatises on the Comet of 1577’, Isis, 22 (1934), pp. 41–68. On the general pro-astrological climate see Claudia Brosseder, Im Bann der Sterne: Caspar Peucer, Philipp Melanchthon und andere Wittenberger Astrologen (Berlin: Akad. Verl., 2004); idem, ‘The Writing in the Wittenberg Sky. Also see Almási, ‘Tycho Brahe’, p. 14.

10 Thomas Erastus, Disputatio de auro potabili. In qua accurate admodum disquiritur, num ex metallis, opera chemiae, concinnata pharmaca tute utiliterque bibi possint. Adiectum est ad calcem libri iudicium eiusdem authoris de indicatione cometarum, ex veris fundamentis et naturae principiis erutum (Basel: Perna, 1578); Andreas Duditius, De cometarum significatione commentariolus. In quo non minus eleganter, quam doctè et verè, mathematicorum quorundam in ea re vanitas refutatur. Addidimus D. Thomae Erasti eadem de re sententiam (Basel: Perna, 1579); Thomas Erastus et al., De cometis dissertationes novae Thomae Erasti, Andreae Dudithii, Marcelli Squarcialupi, Symoni Grynaei (Basel: Ex officina Leonardi Ostenii, sumptibus Pietro Perna, 1580); Simon Grynaeus, Commentarii duo, de ignitis meteoris unus, alter de cometarum causis atque significationibus (Basel: Perna, 1580) (this book was attached to the De cometis dissertations novae, but probably was also sold separately); Thomas Erastus, De astrologia divinatrice epistolae. Iam olim ab eodem ad diversos scriptae, et in duos libros digestae ac nunc demum in gratiam veritatis studiosorum in lucem aeditae, opera et studio Ioannis Iacobi Grynaei (Basel: Perna, 1580).

11 On the history and content of these prints, see Thorndike, A History of Magic, 6, pp. 183–86; Cesare Vasoli, ‘Andreas Dudith-Sbardellati e la disputa sulle comete’, in idem, I miti e gli astri (Naples: Guida, 1977), pp. 351–87; Mosley, ‘The History and Historiography’, pp. 312–20.

12 On Erastus, see Charles D. Gunnoe, Thomas Erastus and the Palatinate. A Renaissance Physician in the Second Reformation (Leiden: Brill, 2010). On ‘Erastianism’ see ibid., pp. 177–91, 385–410.

13 Erastus, De astrologia divinatrice epistolae, p. 1. The book was apparently prepared for print already in 1563–1564, but did not appear before 1580 (also because Erastus used to have scruples in publishing the letters of others without consulting them). See Erastus’s letters to Johann Jacob Grynaeus of 29 December 1579 and 14 February 1580, in Basel, Universitätbibliothek, G II 4, ff. 286 and 307. In the letter of 14 February, he claims he has not seen those ‘epistolae’ since 1563 and now wants to read and better them and make some additions, since he did and learned much in the 16 years that passed. I wholeheartedly thank Charles D. Gunnoe for his generous help and for sharing his transcripts of Erastus’s letters and his studies on Erastus with me. When I refer to J. J. Grynaeus’s correspondence in Basel, I rely on the transcripts generously provided to me by Prof. Gunnoe.

14 Erastus, De astrologia divinatrice epistolae, p. 2.

15 See Ibid. The editor of the 1580 edition, Johann Jacob Grynaeus (see note 10) also recognises Pico’s importance, praising him on the first page of his own preface. Yet it was not Pico’s Disputationes Erastus had translated into German, but the shorter and simpler Contro gli astrologi of Girolamo Savonarola, entitled Astrologia Confutata. Ein wahrhafte Gegründte Unwidersprechliche Confutation …  (Schleusingen: Hamsing, 1557). It was because of attacks against this first book that he decided to publish his Defensio libelli Hieronymi Savonarolae de astrologia divinatrice adversus Christophorum Stathmionem (Geneva?: Le Preux & Petit, 1569). On the history of this latter print, see Stefano Dall’Aglio, Savonarola in Francia: circolazione di un’eredità politico-religiosa nell’Europa del Cinquecento (Turin: Aragno, 2006), pp. 275–76; Charles D. Gunnoe, ‘German Protestantism and Astrology: The Debate between Thomas Erastus and the Melanchthon Circle’, in Religion und Naturwissenschaften im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, ed. by Kaspar von Greyerz et al. (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2010), pp. 84–99.

16 Erastus, Disputatio de auro potabili. See Erastus to J. J. Grynaeus of 15 January 1578, Basel, Universitätbibliothek, G II 4, f. 215.

17 See Gunnoe, Thomas Erastus, pp. 322–24.

18 On Crato, see J. F. U. Gillet, Crato von Crafftheim und seine Freunde. Ein Beitrag zur Kirchengeschichte (Frankfurt: Brönner, 1860); Howard Louthan, The Quest for Compromise. Peacemakers in Counter-Reformation Vienna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 85–105; Ralf Böer, ‘Friedenspolitik durch Verketzerung Johannes Crato (1519–1585) und die Denunziation der Paracelsisten als Arianer’, Medizinhistorisches Journal, 37 (2002), pp. 139–82; Charles D. Gunnoe, Jr. and Jole Shackelford, ‘Johannes Crato von Krafftheim (1519–1585): Imperial Physician, Irenicist, and Anti–Paracelsian’, in Ideas and Cultural Margins in Early Modern Germany: Essays in Honor of H. C. Erik Midelfort, ed. by Robert Barnes et al. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 201–16; Tilmann Walter, ‘New Light on Antiparacelsianism (c. 1570–1610): The Medical Republic of Letters and the Idea of Progress in Science’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 43 (2012), pp. 701–25; Jean-Michel Agasse and Concetta Pennuto, Girolamo Mercuriale et Johann Crato von Krafftheim. Une correspondance entre deux médecins humanistes (Geneva: Droz, 2016).

19 Walter, ‘New Light on Antiparacelsianism’.

20 Letter of Crato to Erastus on 15 May 1579, in Epistolarum philosophicarum: medicinalium ac chymicarum  …  volumen, ed.by Laurentius Scholzius (Francofurti: apud Andreae Wecheli haeredes, 1598), p. 386: ‘Scriptum de cometa tuum diligenter perlegi, ac reipsa comperi minus profanitatis habere, quam plerique male feriati illi attribuant. Fundamentis tuis, quae ex rationum momentis accurate deduxisti, non invitus assentior. Miror tamen te de altero quoque κριτηρίῳ, experientia nempe, seu asseverando, seu refutando nihil, nisi obiter alicubi, in medium attulisse. Et videtur tamen illa locum in iis merito habere, quae sub sensus cadunt, et observationibus multorum singularium constant. Etsi autem plerunque imbecillis est eiusmodi probatio, quae ab experientia nuda ducitur, non tamen prorsus repudianda est, cum quam varie illa impediri possit, aut turbari, prudentes norint.’

21 On Dudith, see Pierre Costil, André Dudith. Humaniste Hongrois. 1533–1589. Sa vie, son oeuvre et ses manuscrits grecs (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1935); Gábor Almási, The Uses of Humanism. Johannes Sambucus (1531–1584), Andreas Dudith (1533–1589), and the Republic of Letters in East Central Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2009). At the time of the publication, Dudith lived on his Moravian estates in the village of Paskov, which he left in 1579 to move to the city of Wrocław in Silesia.

22 See the long quotes from Turnèbe’s Oratio de philosophia, inserted into the 1580 edition of Dudith’s De cometarum significatione commentariolus (as in note 10), pp. 187–89. See the critical edition in Dudithius, Epistulae, 6, pp. 126–27.

23 On his astrological-astronomical interests, see Costil, André Dudith, pp. 290–95, 358–60; Lech Szczucki, ‘Gli interessi matematico-astronomici di Andrea Dudith’, Rinascimento, 28 (1989), pp. 361–73; Vasoli, ‘Andreas Dudith-Sbardellati e la disputa’; Margherita Palumbo, ‘Intorno a un Cardano annotato da Andreas Dudith’, Bruniana & Campanelliana, 7 (2001), pp. 564–67.

24 Palumbo, ‘Intorno a un Cardano’. See also Dudith’s annotations in Reg. Lat. 1115 of the Biblioteca Vaticana. Cf. with Costil, André Dudith, pp. 294–95, and Palumbo, ‘Intorno a un Cardano’, pp. 566–67.

25 Palumbo, ‘Intorno a un Cardano’, p. 562. Curiously, the place he quotes years later from Turnèbe’s Oratio de philosophia (see note 22) also deals with Christ’s horoscope in Cardano, where Turnèbe claims that crafting this horoscope is worse than any impiety. Cf. with Nicodemus Frischlin’s similar comment on the same place in his De astronomicae artis (Frankfurt: Spies, 1586), f. (?)2^v.

26 It is unlikely, however, that at the time of writing Dudith could have had access to Scaliger’s edition of the Astronomicon libri quinque by Manilius (1579) or have read his Exotericarum exercitationum libri XV de subtilitate, ad Hieronymum Cardanum, which he had wanted to obtain much earlier (see the quote in Palumbo, ‘Intorno a un Cardano’, p. 565), but which he still has not studied in 1580 (see Dudithius, Epistulae, 6, p. 298).

27 Dudithius, Epistulae, 2, p. 401: ‘Astrologos vanos esse non ignoro, scripta tamen eorum, animi causa, aliquando per otium attingo’.

28 Andreas Dudithius, De cometarum significatione commentariolus. In quo non minus eleganter, quam doctè et verè Mathematicorum quorundam in ea re vanitas refutatur. Addidimus D. Thomae Erasti eadem de re sententiam (Basel: Perna, 1579). The book appeared with an introduction by Giovanni Michele Bruto, containing also Erastus’s work as an attachment.

29 Esrom Rüdinger and Jakob Monau were both upset by Erastus’s attack on astrology. From a letter by Dudith (c. February 1578), we learn that Rüdinger (the head of a Lutheran boarding school in Moravia) also wrote an essay about the comet (apparently before Dudith did) in favour of astrological prognostications. Rüdinger’s work probably has not survived. See Dudithius, Epistulae, 6, p. 101. On Monau’s attitude, see Erastus’s letter to him of 23 February 1580, in Consiliorum Et Epistolarum Medicinalium. Jo. Cratonis A Kraftheim, ed. by Laurentius Scholzius (Hannover: Pressius, 1646), pp. 328–29; and Dudith’s letter to Hájek of 26 September 1580, in Dudithius, Epistulae, 6, pp. 364 and 372–73.

30 Dudithius, Epistulae, 6, p. 108: ‘Quaeris, vir clarissime, quid de cometarum significatione sentiam. Idem philosophus et medicus praestantissimus Simonius, idem varia doctrina perpolitus Esromus Rudingerus, idem bonis artibus iurisque scientia eruditus Iacobus Monavius noster, idem amici quidam alii a me postularunt. Invidiosa magis quam difficilis responsio est in tanta opinionum varietate, quibus docti homines in diversas partes distrahuntur. Huc accedit quod, si quis non levibus rationibus et, quae rationes, ut Galenus tuus scribit, superat, experientia adductus a communi popularique opinione sibi discedendum censet, is a superstitiosis hominibus et plus aequo timidis in horrendum gravissimumque crimen impietatis vocatur’. Cf. with Crato’s words in note 20. In the 1580 edition, Dudith made two interesting changes to the text. In place of ‘ut Galenus tuus scribit’, he inserted ‘in rebus praesertim particularibus, sensu atque observatione constantibus’; while in the place of ‘timidis’, he inserted ‘ob causarum ignorationem meticulosis’.

31 De cometarum significatione  … , ed. by Elias Maior (Wrocław: Typis Baumannianis, 1619); De significatu cometarum dissertationes et judicia doctorum hominum … , ed. by Jo. Andreas Bosius (Jena: Sengenwald, 1665); Cometologia, oder gründliche Beschreibung deß  … grossen Cometens (Frankfurt: Serlin, 1665), pp. 222–42; Georgius J. Graevius, Oratio de cometis  …  Accesserunt Andreae Duditii  …  de cometis dissertatione et judicia (Utrecht: ex officina R. a Zyll, 1681). According to the Hungarian catalogue at www.eruditio.hu, there is also a 1629 edition in Wrocław. One curious edition is the 1619 one by Elias Maior in Wrocław. As we learn from the book, the young author was a history teacher at the local grammar school. After his study tour in Wittenberg (a stronghold of judiciary astrology), he wanted to express his gratitude to the city for the support it had provided with a publication on the recent comet of 1618. When he presented his work to the city council, his patrons at the council were apparently little enthused by his astrological forecast. He was advised to read Dudith’s commentary and was only allowed to publish his work together with Dudith’s commentary. The result was a confused work, in which the author wanted to satisfy his patrons by appearing sceptical about astrological prognostication and at the same time also remain loyal to his Wittenberg education and beliefs.

32 Dudithius, Epistulae, 6, pp. 108–9.

33 Ibid., 6, p. 120.

34 Ibid., 6, p. 124. In the 1580 edition, Dudith provides the names of two other persons who supposedly foretold the appearance of the same comet: Johannes Carion and Leonhard Thurneysser.

35 Ibid., 6, p. 125.

36 Ibid., 6, p. 130: ‘… a viris doctis firmissimis rationibus demonstratum, corpora nostra non a cometarum solum crinibus aut barba aut cauda, sed ne ab ipso quidem caelo aliter affici, quam insita illius natura patiatur. In animos vero ipsos atque adeo voluntates consiliaque nostra nihil iuris, nihil potestatis vel meteoris vel caelo ipsi a natura vel naturae ipsius opifice Deo tributum fuisse;’ ibid., 6, p. 132: ‘Caelum enim causa est universalis, quae beneficio motus et luminis omnia, quae sunt in hoc mundo, nullo discrimine alterat et vegetat, nullam interea rerum ipsarum cognitionem habens’.

37 De cometis dissertationes novae, p. 19. See Mosley, ‘The History and Historiography’, 318.

38 On Dudith’s role, see the preface by Johann Jacob Grynaeus in Erastus, De astrologia divinatrice epistolae, f. α4^v.

39 On Squarcialupi see Giampaolo Zucchini, ‘Per la ricostruzione dell’epistolario di Marcello Squarcialupi: alcune lettere inedite dai Grigioni (1586–1588)’, in Antitrinitarianism in the Second Half of the 16^th Century, ed. by Róbert Dán and Antal Pirnát (Budapest; Leiden: Akadémia, 1982), pp. 323–40; Vasoli, ‘Andreas Dudith-Sbardellati e la disputa’; Claudio Madonia, ‘Marcello Squarcialupi’, in Bibliotheca dissidentium, vol. 16, ed. by André Séguenny (Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1994); Alessandra Quaranta, ‘Exile Experiences “Religionis causa” and the Transmission of Medical Knowledge between Italy and German-Speaking Territories in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century’, in Fruits of Migration. Heterodox Italian Migrants and Central European Culture 1550–1620, ed. by Cornel Zwierlein and Vincenzo Lavenia (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 72–101.

40 See Dudith’s letter to Thomas Jordan in Dudithius, Epistulae, 6, pp. 77–78, 96–97. Squarcialupi stayed with Dudith c. in January–April 1578.

41 Dudith refers to Squarcialupi’s work in the past tense (disseruit) in the first edition (Dudithius, Epistulae, 6, p. 109), while Squarcialupi claims that he already had the idea of writing an essay in Brno (staying with Thomas Jordan), but was convinced only by Dudith in Paskov: De cometis dissertationes novae, p. 28.

42 Squarcialupi quoted Crato’s letter, in which he claimed not to know what to write about the comet and never, in fact, to have understood what a comet was (‘De Cometa quid scribam nescio. Neque enim unquam intellexi quid ille sit’). See De cometis dissertationes novae, p. 28. On Thomas Jordan, see Robert Offner, ‘Neuen Daten zur Biographie des Klausenburger Arztes Thomas Jordanus (1540–1586)’, Sudhoffs Archiv, 102 (2018), pp. 89–112.

43 Marcellus Squarcialupus, ‘De cometa in universum, atque de illo qui anno 1577 visus est’, in De cometis dissertationes novae, pp. 27–97. For an overview see Vasoli, ‘Andreas Dudith-Sbardellati e la disputa’, pp. 316–19.

44 See Thorndike, A History of Magic, 6, p. 185.

45 See De cometis dissertationes novae, p. 93.

46 Although Tycho politely acknowledged the merits of Squarcialupi’s argument, he did not consider him (or Erastus) at length. He felt sorry that the Italian doctor did not support his position with mathematical demonstrations and had made only very amateurish astronomical observations: Tychonis Brahe Dani Opera omnia, 15 vols, ed. by J. L. E. Dreyer (Copenhagen: in Libraria Gyldendaliana, 1913–1929), 4, pp. 358–59, 471–72.

47 De cometis dissertationes novae, pp. 50–55.

48 Ibid., pp. 80–81.

49 Vasoli, ‘Andreas Dudith-Sbardellati e la disputa’, p. 319.

50 De cometis dissertationes novae, p. 88.

51 Ibid., p. 90: ‘Et herbulam in pratis videns, non raro subsisto, admirans et naturae solertiam et Dei maiestatem cum animo meo reputans. In eiusmodi igitur portentis et miraculis dicam esse crinitum sydus, hoc inquam sensu, qa(quia) nescio ex qua materia, in quo loco, a quibus causis fiat, foveatur et fulgeat.’ Hájek misinterprets this passage, claiming that Squarcialupi contradicts himself, and following Hájek, so does Mosley: see Thaddaeus Hagecius Ab Hayck, Apodixis physica et mathematica de cometis  …  (Gorlice: Fritsch, 1581), f. B2^v; Mosley, ‘The History and Historiography’, 318.

52 De cometis dissertationes novae, p. 97: ‘Quare nugis Mathematicorum cavendis et superstitione vulgi tollenda, non religio laeditur, ut aliqui murmurant, non Epicurus fovetur insanus. Cum potius neque in Deum pietas, neque in homines charitas iustitiaque ulla teneri possit, nisi praestigiis istis omnibus palam detectis’.

53 See Erastus’s letters to Joachim Camerarius of 22 Augustus and 5 November 1579, in Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nürnberg, Sammlung Trew; and Erastus to Johann Jacob Grynaeus of 29 December 1579 in Basel, Universitätbibliothek, G II 4, f. 285–86.

54 See, for example, his letter to Grynaeus of 18 March 1578, in Basel, Universitätbibliothek, G II 4, f. 217; and his letter to the reader in De cometis dissertationes novae, f. α^r.

55 See his letter to Dudith of 24 February 1580, prefacing the De cometis dissertationes novae.

56 In his letter to the reader in De cometis dissertationes novae (α^r-v) Erastus mentions the recent letter of a learned and serious man who criticized his failure to rely on experience. Of the two criteria (of scientific arguments), reason and experience, Erastus supposedly relied only on reason: ‘Non enim convenire putat, si ex duobus κριτηρίοις ratione scilicet et experientia, alterum solum adhibeatur ad iudicandum eas res, quas ambobus dignosci et examinari oportet.’ If one considers Crato’s opinion (as quoted in note 20), it is reasonable to think that he was the author of the letter.

57 Erastus to Grynaeus, 18 August 1579. Basel, Universitätbibliothek, G II 4, fol. 240: ‘Conscripsi de Cometis commentar. quae omnibus doctis mirè probatum iri confido’. Transcribed by Charles D. Gunnoe, whom I thank again for his generous help.

58 The copy I consulted is held by the University of Dresden (Astron. 410; Astron. 415).

59 Erastus also uses rather harsh words in his letter to Grynaeus of 14 February 1580 (Basel, Universitätbibliothek, G II 4, fol. 307). He allowed Grynaeus to decide about the order of the individual authors of the volume (suggesting, however, that Dudith be the first as the initiator of the project), but did not ‘authorise him’ to upset the order of his own work, even cutting his apology into two parts and inserting in the middle his defence of Aristotle. Absurdly (showing the negligence of the editors), Erastus’s suggested (but ignored) list of contents was printed on p. 104.

60 The full title is De cometarum ortu, natura et causis tractatus, in quo Aristotelis sententia explicatur et contra D. Marcellum Squarcialupum Plumbiensem defenditur. Squarcialupi did not want to let Erastus have the final word, and he prepared an answer to Erastus but sent it neither to him nor to Dudith. See his letter to Theodor Zwinger of 1 July 1583, in Basel, Universitätbibliothek, Frey Mscr II 26, no. 403.

61 Commentarii duo de ignitis meteoris unus, alter de cometarum causis atque significationibus, 61 and 71.

62 On Perna see Antonio Rotondò, ‘Pietro Perna e la vita culturale e religiosa di Basilea fra il 1570 e il 1580’, in Studi e ricerche di storia ereticale italiana del Cinquecento (Turin: Giappichelli, 1974), pp. 273–394 (re-edited in A. Rotondò, Studi di storia ereticale del Cinquecento, 2 vols. (Florence: Olschki, 2008), 2: pp. 479–575; Leandro Perini, La vita e i tempi di Pietro Perna (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2002), pp. 159–60; on Dudith, see Almási, The Uses of Humanism, passim; on Simon and Jacob Grynaeus see the preface of the latter in Erastus’s De astrologia divinatrice epistolae, esp. α4^r. Note also Tadeáš Hájek’s reaction to that ‘literary and friendly duel’, quoted by Mosley in ‘The History and Historiography’, 318; and Tycho Brahe’s words quoted below.

63 But cf. with Erastus’s very first letter in the book, addressed to Dudith. Against Squarcialupi’s opinion, Erastus confirms having supported Aristotle’s theory of the comet and asks ‘How could it be held as false or untrue what is in agreement with the most holy writings [i.e. the Scripture/Aristotle]?’ This seems to be an unfair question in the context of the book, and does not fit Erastus’s epistemology either (cf. with his next letter, addressed to the reader).

64 Dated 1 February 1579. Dudithius, Epistolae, 6:pp. 198–202. On Tycho adopting Dudith’s arguments, see Tychonis Brahe Dani Opera omnia, 4:p. 472.

65 Dudithius, Epistolae, 6: 199: ‘Virtutes omnes ex hominis natura et industria comparari scribit. Dei opem neque ad has neque ad alias praeclaras atque admirandas actiones usquam adhibet. Deum in sempiterna quadam ludicraque caeli conversione occupatum et tamquam miserum aliquem figulum rotae volutationi perpetuo affixum esse memorat. Divinam providentiam tollit cum iustitia et, quae illinc proficiscuntur, poenis omnibus. Mundum aeternum, animos mortales facit. Non aliam quam, quae in hac vita sit, beatitatem constituit eamque totam ex ipso homine derivari inque eodem terminari docet.’

66 Some of the marginal notes in Inc. 699 in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Milan) appear to be in Dudith’s hand. See Andrea Ceccarelli, ‘Un inedito commento rinascimentale a Lucrezio: Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, Pedro Nuñez Vela e Andrea Dudith lettori del De rerum natura a Padova’, Giornale critica della filosofia italiana, 7, 9 (2015), 233–58. For Lucretius, this present world or civilisation is finite, but the universe, like the atoms that constitute it, are eternal.

67 Dudithius, Epistolae, 6: 200: ‘Age igitur, descende tu quoque in admirandum hoc pulcherrimum, quod dixi, orbis theatrum. Tuis oculis, non alienis, naturam intuere, tuos sensus adhibe […]. Non haec Pythagoreorum est schola, non theologorum, in quibus auctoritas pro ratione admitti debeat. Soli hunc theologiae honorem habemus ut, quod ex sacris monumentis profert, id nos sine ulla dubitatione pro sacrosancta et firma veritate recipiamus. Liberum in aliis artibus atque <in> primis in philosophia naturali iudicium ingeniosis et politis hominibus relinquimus.’

68 On Zwinger, see his Theatrum Humanae Vitae (Basel: Henricpetri, 1604), pp. 1273–75; on Sambucus see his letter to Crato of 4 December 1577, in J. Sambucus, ‘Die Briefe des Johannes Sambucus (Zsámboky) 1554–1584’, ed. by Hans Gerstinger and Anton Vantuch, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philologische-Historische Klasse. Sitzungsberichte, 255 (1968), pp. 231–32; on Jordan, see among others De cometis dissertationes novae, p. 28.

69 Some were already named by Squarcialupi (for example, the mathematician Conrad Dasypodius) and mentioned above (like Jakob Monau or Esrom Rüdinger). One could also mention other astronomer friends, like Johannes Praetorius and Paulus Fabritius (who published on the comet of 1577); the Wrocław physician Wenceslaus Raphanus (see Dudith’s letter to him printed in De cometarum significatione  …  Wrocław, 1619, as in note 31); and the brother of Jakob Monau, the imperial doctor Peter Monau (see Dudithius, Epistulae, 6, pp. 352–55).

70 Almási, ‘Tycho Brahe’; idem, ‘Was Astronomy the Science of Empires? An Eighteenth-Century Debate in View of the Cases of Tycho and Galileo’, in Negotiating Knowledge, Decentering Empires. A Decentered View, ed. by Laszlo Kontler, Antonella Romano, Silvia Sebastiani and Zsuzsanna Török (Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave, 2014), pp. 25–51.

71 Tychonis Brahe Dani Opera omnia, 4, p. 402: ‘Licet vero absolutam certitudinem in his praevisionibus nulli mortalium patere existimem, non tamen cum quibusdam alias apprime eruditis viris sentio, qui ut cometas omnis influentiae expertes esse, plausibiliter obtinerent, superioribus annis suas quasdam opinabiles rationes publicarunt’.

72 Ursus, De astronomicis hypothesibus (as in note 3), f. Giv^r (see the German translation by Dieter Launert: Nova Kepleriana, Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2019, p. 151).

73 Roeslin, Tractatus meteorastrologiphysicus (as in note 3).

74 Ibid., ff. 28^r-v.

75 See Sachiko Kusukawa, The Transformation of Natural Philosophy: the Case of Philip Melanchthon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 128–29.

76 See in this regard Dudith’s letter to Hájek of 3 August and 26 September 1580, in Dudithius, Epistulae, 6, pp. 346 and 365.

77 Quotation from the subtitle: Thaddaeus Hagecius Ab Hayck, Epistola ad Martinum Mylium: in qua examinatur sententia Michaelis Maestlini et Helisaei Roeslin de cometa anni 1577. Ac simul etiam pie afferitur contra profanas et Epicureas quorundam opiniones, qui cometas nihil significare contendunt (Gorlice: Fritsch, 1580).

78 Hagecius, Apodixis physica (as in note 51). Hájek’s original measurements made him believe the comet of 1577 was sublunary (it was difficult to calculate the parallax of a moving object). See Thaddaeus Hagecius Ab Hayck, Descriptio Cometae  … (Prague: Melantrichus, 1578).

79 Hagecius, Epistola ad Martinum Mylium, f. C^v: ‘Idque neminem negaturum esse existimo, nisi forte illum, qui animam non a Deo immediate homini inspiratam, sed tanquam a traduce deductam esse existimat’.

80 This could be one of the reasons why the interpretation of Aristotle’s De anima had such a central place in Christian philosophy.

81 See the quotation in note 36. This question will also be addressed by Benedict Pereira in his Adversus fallaces et superstitiosas artes, id est, de magia, de observatione somniorum et de divinatione astrologica (Ingolstadt: Sartorius, 1591).

82 See Dudith’s letters to Hájek of 12 October 1579 and 11 December 1579 (saying ‘I don’t believe that you won’t be offended’), and the one of 20 February 1580 (saying ‘I just wrote what came to my mind without thinking twice but with the idea of provoking a rational debate’): Dudithius, Epistulae, 6, pp. 252–54, 274–76, 297–301. Meanwhile, Hájek also found his letters offensive, see, for example, Dudith’s letter of 21 August 1580, in ibid., 6, pp. 351–52.

83 See the letter of 26 September 1580, in ibid., 6, pp. 365–66.

84 Letter of 3 August 1580, in ibid., 6, pp. 347–48.

85 Letter of 26 September 1580, in ibid., 6, p. 371: ‘Non ex hoc ego fonte astrologiam repudio quod saepissime erret, sed caput peto, fundamenta eruo et ostendo non posse eam non errare, cum de futuris contingentibus (hoc enim in controversiam a me vocatum est) blaterat et nugaces quasdam suas credulis hominibus praenotiones fallaciaque prognostica vendicat.‘ (my italics).

86 Letter of 26 September 1580, in Dudithius, Epistulae, 6, p. 369: ‘Dicam clarius et saepe idem repetam, fieri non posse ut ex communis et universalis causae cognitione, quae remotissima sit, effectus particulares contingentes praenoscantur. Non enim possunt illae sine his propinquis causis, quae variae sunt et prope infinitae, quidquam producere’. Quoted also by Vasoli, ‘Andreas Dudith-Sbardellati e la disputa’, p. 321.

87 Dudithius, Epistulae, 6, p. 366.

88 Ibid., 6, p. 366: ‘Omnis nostra notitia, omnis cognitio a sensibus est. In sensus autem nostros non incurrunt adhuc res, quae nondum sunt aut ne esse quidem coeperunt. Quomodo igitur earum praesensionem habere licebit?’

89 See, in particular, ‘Epistola X’, in De astrologia divinatrice epistolae, pp. 129–58 (esp. pp. 151–58), written originally in 1558.

90 Ibid., p. 147: ‘Quecunque hic in terris particulatim fiunt, eorum caussae sunt vel Fortuna et Casus, vel Hominis voluntas, vel Natura aliqua particularis’ (my italics).

91 Ibid.: ‘ut Fortuna nihil aliud fere sit, quam verae caussae ignoratio’.

92 Dudithius, Epistulae, 6, p. 370: ‘… non in caelum, sed propinquiores causas id referendum esse. Quanta sit victus rationis, quanta educationis, quanta consuetudinis et disciplinae vis, cotidianus usus docere potest. Quantum autem intersit quo affectu parentum generetur, concipiatur, in utero gestetur infans, quo lacte alatur, a quibus, quo loco, cum quibus educetur, quaere ex tuis medicis, non minimas ingeniorum varietatis has esse causas affirmantibus.’ Somewhat unexpectedly, Dudith added here that the variety of characters, like the miraculous variety of everything in the universe, depended only on the divine will, which could not be understood by anyone. This argument calls to mind Dudith’s paraphrase of Themistius’s oration. See Gábor Almási, ‘The Riddle of Themistius’ “Twelfth Oration” and the Question of Religious Tolerance in the Sixteenth Century’, Central Europe, 2 (2004), pp. 83–108.

93 In Hájek’s case, see, for example, his minimum definition of a comet in the Apodixis physica, f. B3^r: ‘Interea cometam non incommode sic describi posse existimaverim, si dixerimus illum esse naturam quandam, seu lucem globosam instar stellae, radios sui luminis in partem a Sole aversam mittentem: peculiariter et extra naturae cursum in aliqua coeli parte, ad certum determinatumque tempus impressam a Deo: ut homines raram illam et insolitam naturam intuentes cogitent, non frustra a Deo sibi expositam esse, sed ad commonefaciendum et designandum aliquid.’

94 See, among others, Barnes, Astrology and Reformation; Jerratsch, Der frühneuzeitliche Kometendiskurs.

95 See in this regard the next quote by Squarcialupi.

96 See Dudith’s references to Biblical places in Dudithius, Epistulae, 6, p. 367. Prophets, of course, had been an exception to this rule, but Dudith hardly mentioned them.

97 Seneca, Naturales quaestiones, trans. John Clarke (London: Macmillan, 1910), 7.1.1; Dudithius, Epistulae, 6, p. 122. On Seneca’s influence on thinking about comets and prodigies in the same period, see Van Nouhuys, The Age of Two-Faced Janus, pp. 145–212.

98 See Luke 16:27–31.

99 De cometis dissertationes novae, p. 88: ‘Nam si charissima fuit (ut scimus) Deo Hebraeorum gens, cur illam his cometarum prodigiis ac terroribus non in officio continebat? […] Tamen Hebraei non curarunt cometas, et recte id quidem, quia quamquam a Deo hi sunt, non tamen portenta sunt, sed vel ex natura elementari, ut fulmen, vel aetherea, nec nobis adhuc perspecta, ut stellae. Et non sunt cometae necessarii ad prodigii vim. Quod enim est maius miraculum, quam homo ab inferis excitatus? Tamen ait Christus, non opus esse ut mortui suscitentur. Habent, ait, Mosem et prophetas. Quid enim praeterea volumus? omnia mala, omnes calamitates non singulis tantum, sed simul cunctis mortalibus imminere scimus. Africanus, Marius, Pompeius, Caesar, Cicero, Brutus exitu suo [con]vincunt, nihil certi, nihil firmi praeter virtutem ac pietatem esse sub sole. Prophetae semper vociferantur. Christus omnia tradit. Quorsum, inquit, volunt miracula? Neque redivivi sunt illis necessarii. Minime igitur est cometa prodigium, quia non est necessarius ad hunc usum.’ Cf. with Augustine, The City of God 22.8; Petrarch, On Religious Leisure (De otio religioso), trans. S. S. Schearer (New York: Italica, 2002), 75–78.

100 Only the letters by Sozzini survive in Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum ([Amsterdam]: [s.n.], 1656), pp. 495–510. They have been edited and published in Dudithius, Epistulae, 7, pp. 186–97, 226–50, 292–98.

101 See especially the undated letter of 1581 in Dudithius, Epistulae, 7, pp. 186–97. Note that the debate was greatly influenced by Augustine, The City of God, 22.8.

102 Pensées diverses écrites à un docteur de Sorbonne à l’occasion de la Comète qui parut au mois de décembre 1680 (Rotterdam: Reiner Leers, 1683). The first English translation is from 1708 (London: Morphew). On Bayle, see Jonathan Israel, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man, 1670–1752 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 71–85, 145–54.

103 See Pensées diverses écrites à un docteur, chapters 58–80.

104 Ibid., 2, p. 810: ‘Parce que si les Cométes étoient un signe, aprés tout ce qui a été dit, il faudroit qu’elles fussent un signe formé de Dieu par voye de miracle, pour commander à tous les hommes de se mettre en état d’appaiser le courroux du Ciel; c’est à dire qu’il faudroit que Dieu eust fait & fist encore des miracles, pour faire faire cent millions d’actes d’idolâtrie. Ce qui ne se peut dire sans impieté.’ The translation is partially based on the contemporary English translation in Miscellaneous Reflections Occasion’d by the Comet, 2, pp. 539–40.

105 Dudith had no idea why this happened (see Epistulae, 6:353). It could have been for Bruto’s radicalism, but also for personal motives.

106 Dudithius, De cometarum significatione commentariolus (1579), p. 7: ‘Nam si quid inesse aculei in illius oratione videatur, a quo ne ipsi quidem nobis temperare potuimus, id totum eorum nequitiae et petulantiae refutanda est, qui imperitorum animos mendaciis multis circumveniendo, hinc pravitate ingenii, hinc multitudinis errore, ad iniustum atque impium quaestum abutuntur: quorum per omnia fora circumversantium et magnus semper numerus fuit et nunc maximus est.’

107 See Dudithius, Epistulae, 6:366; Hagecius, Apodixis physica, B4^r-v, E3^r–E5^r.

108 Quoted by Almási, ‘Tycho Brahe’, 18–19.

109 Undated letter to Girolamo Mercuriale (c. 1560), in Erastus, De astrologia divinatrice epistolae, p. 125: ‘Constat astronomiam non astrorum vires et actiones considerare, sed motum atque magnitudinem eorum investigare ac metiri. Quare non erit illa vanitas praestantis huius scientiae pars aliqua existimanda’.

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